Second Best Baby Ever!

...next to my nephew Brendan, of course. This is a small, jolly baby girl named Emihle. She is the one tied to my back in the picture...



That is how the ladies here carry their babies. Emihle is an orphan who has come to live at Edzimkulu's new orphan house (a better name than "orphan house" is pending...)She has TB and so she snorts and wheezes like a little piglet; it is very endearing. She is quite spoiled...with 2 house mothers, 9 female home based care workers, 5 female team members and of course Russ and I, in the near vicinity.

How I Ruined Russ' Birthday...and other stories

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

On Wednesday I drove a VW Combi (van) full of 22 ARV patients and their caregivers to the nearest hospital, which is 45 min away from where I live and 1.5 hrs away from the village. This is a weekly occurance; we are able to do HIV testing and counselling in the village, but need to go to the hospital for ARV's and TB meds, etc. For now...we are hoping that will change in the new year. When we finally left the hospital at 5:30 (the patients load into the van at 7 in the morning), we got a flat tire. So...we had 5 HIV positive men working on changing the tire - a testament to the benefits of ARV treatment if I've ever seen one! Eventually we were rescued by Jim (co-director of Edzimkulu).

And that's where it all began...

Russ' birthday fell on the next day, Thursday. We had big plans for his South African birthday...a dinner party, cake, good times (or so we thought). Again, I was out driving in the VW van; this time I had 6 home-based care workers with me and we headed out to a village to do outreach HIV testing.The day started off well; we went to see a co-worker whose baby had recently contracted TB meningitis...baby was healing well and her hemiplegia was resolving. Good news!

We did our testing...and then I ran out of gas. Bad news!

Or so I thought.

Lyn, who works in another NGO in the area, came to our rescue and went to get petrol.
Then the battery died...we boosted...it died again...I taught my colleagues every single english swear word I know. Just kidding. Or am I?

We hitched a lift to the nearest town and took pictures of ourselves leaping while we waited to be rescued. Sooooo funny...



Then Jim and Russ, the Birthday Boy, rescued us. In South Africa, if you leave a vehicle on the side of the road for long, it is likely it will be stripped of parts by the time you return...so we towed it. With a Mazda bakkie (SUV).

And then the tow rope snapped. My bad...

After leaving the broken VW in front of a random police station we headed home, in the dark.
And then the fog rolled in...

They call this the Mist Belt. We drove 30 km/hr. On the highway.

Happy 29th Birthday, Russ:) (worst birthday ever...no supper, no cake, no seatbelts, home at 10 pm).

But he did get sung an exuberant Happy Birthday song from Nobulala, Babalwa, and Nonceba in the back of the truck:)

In the end, I hadn't run out of gas, the alternator had crapped out. For the record...

Behaving Badly in Ballito

November 11-12: the infamous Weekend in Ballito.

Russ, Laurel, Sharmin and I hit the road with our friend Roger...5 of us in a small car, plus a surf board (obviously). Ballito is on the eastern coast of S. Africa, just north of Durban. We hoped to lie on the beach and bronze (which means freckle, in my case) and snorkel and surf and all that good stuff...but the weather was bad so we mostly just decided to represent Canada in all the local bars. Ooooohhh, my....the edited version of the pictures are available for all to see! Seeing the unedited version may require bribing (insert The Face here)...
See all my photos at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26173557@N00/

I Rode Across Lesotho on a Horse With No Name

The weekend after we arrived, the 4 of us volunteers went to Lesotho for the weekend. The kingdom of Lesotho is a tiny country embedded in S. Africa, in the Drakensburg mountains. To get there, you need to cross the Sani Pass...a crazy unpaved road through the mountain range. The border patrol will not even let you attempt it without a 4X4 vehicle:)

The countryside is beautiful...rolling green mountains, shepherds following their herds whilst talking on cellphones (I swear it is true!), and round stone and thatch huts. We stayed with a Lesotho man and his daughter, who took us pony trekking in the hills. My horse had a behavioral disorder NOS, so most of the time one of the guides had to lead us (ie. I got babysat! Yesss....) We also went on a cultural tour of the village, with traditional dancing. I tried grinding the grain for flour to make the traditional bread:) At the end of our trip we went to the Highest Pub In Africa (at the top of the Sani Pass). For having reached this milestone in my life, I celebrated with a beer...
I would go back to Lesotho in a second...but I would get a better horse...

Home Away from Home

After our safari, we took the Baz bus (backpackers bus that lets you get on and off where you please), to Pietermaritzburg where Jim and Chris, the executive directors of Edzimkulu, picked us up. We drove to their home 5km outside of a small town (Underburg) in Kwa-Zulu Natal province of S Africa. This will be our home for the next 5 months! It is a beautiful part of the country, right near the Drakensburg mountains. The property is overlooking the Mzimkulu river, and made up of a few small cottages. There are 2 girls volunteering with us for a while, Sharmin and Laurel. They are fantastic ladies and we have lots of fun together - although we outnumber Russ quite a bit.
On Monday we headed to the village (Ndawana) for the first time.

There are about 5000 people spread out over about 40 km. People live in mud huts, and there are a few schools, churches, and tuck shops. There are goats, sheep, cows, and wormy dogs wandering free-range, which makes for some interesting times as we bounce over the pot-holed dirt roads. The goats are adorable, and (if I can't have a pangolin or a bushbaby) I would like to bring one home. Anyway, we had met three of the women in the village previously, so that helped. Most people in the village speak Zulu or Xhosa, with a few speaking Basotho. The village is lively and very pretty...mountains in the background,rolling green hills, women carrying plump little babies wrapped onto their backs and water buckets on their heads. It will all be hard to capture in a photo...

All Safari, All the Time

Russ and I flew to Johannesburg, South Africa, on Oct 15/06. We arrived at 11:30 at night and got to our hostel at 1 am...only to get up at 5 am to leave for our safari trip in Kruger National Park. We went on a 4 day safari with Bundu Safari...Russ and I, a couple from London, an American girl and a Danish girl, and our guide, Alf. It's a long drive to Kruger from Joburg but we got to see some South African countryside! Or maybe I slept, whatever. When we arrived at the park, before we even entered the gates, we saw a some crocs and a herd of elephants cooling off in the river. We moved on through the gates and within 15 min we saw a white rhino and a leopard. Leopards are very very rarely seen on safari...and we got to watch him wandering around near our van for about 10 minutes. It was unbelievable. We were a lucky group...our entire safari was as lucky as our first venture into the park (must be the Canadian influence!) The first 2 nights we camped at sites inside Kruger, having supper and beers around the campfire, and listening to hyenas, owls, and go-away birds (I also swear I could hear snakes but everyone thinks I am crazy...or am I?). Our guide was a fantastic cook and we sampled some of South Africa's finest braai (barbeque).



Over the 4 days, we saw all the cats (lions, a family of cheetahs, leopard, and even an African wildcat which basically looks like a housecat). We saw giraffes, millions of elephants, the odd hippo, kudu, and impala, impala, impala. Our last day we spent on a private game reserve, where we saw a wild pangolin. Pangolins are like big armadillos...or anteaters with armour. Very rare...our guide said that he never expected to see one in his entire career. Anyway, the pictures are more exciting than reading this, so check em' out! Especially the ostrich series...